Spoilers Coda Trilogy Discussion Thread
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Maybe it’s just self selection in postings, but here and elsewhere I’ve noticed that the consensus seems to be “thanks for the wrap up, but not like this” basically. Some feel it invalidates what came before (I personally do not share this view) and many feel it was just too dark, too grim for Star Trek (my view).
But it also is what it is, so we may move on with our lives… and hopefully we’re on track to see a new golden age of Trek literature. I don’t think the golden age began and ended in the 2000-2010 period, though we got some fine wine for sure. 2010-date and 1990s Trek lit had their real high points.
One thing I really enjoyed during the show runs were the crossovers. Think Invasion! and The Dominion War. I hope we get space for more of those bottled up crossovers, and the authors have a lot more experience of it now. And the one-shots - like we’re starting to get again now for DS9 and TNG where we really only see them for TOS in recent years - are brilliant.
We have a bright future ahead of us I feel. But let’s not do an everyone dies episode again.
But it also is what it is, so we may move on with our lives… and hopefully we’re on track to see a new golden age of Trek literature. I don’t think the golden age began and ended in the 2000-2010 period, though we got some fine wine for sure. 2010-date and 1990s Trek lit had their real high points.
One thing I really enjoyed during the show runs were the crossovers. Think Invasion! and The Dominion War. I hope we get space for more of those bottled up crossovers, and the authors have a lot more experience of it now. And the one-shots - like we’re starting to get again now for DS9 and TNG where we really only see them for TOS in recent years - are brilliant.
We have a bright future ahead of us I feel. But let’s not do an everyone dies episode again.
I would not call that the general consensus at all. People who have a beef about something (legitimate or otherwise) tend to be a good deal more vocal than those who don't.
Case in point, I'm quite vocal when complaining "Not ANOTHER Section 31 story!!", or "Not ANOTHER Borg story!", or especially "Not ANOTHER gratuitous invocation of the 'eye-scream' trope!!", or about Goodman gratuitously contradicting prior art in the Kirk "autobiography," but much quieter when singing the praises of the latest GC or CLB novel, or Una McCormack's much more litverse-sensitive Janeway and Spock "autobiographies."
As I've said, I found Coda to be harrowing, but quite good, the way Saving Private Ryan is harrowing, but quite good. And if you find Coda to be dark, then I suggest you avoid Last Best Hope like the plague, or you'll end up "wishing you could un-read it," even more fervently than I do: if ever there was a ST novel steeped in utter hopelessness, that would be it.
As I say, maybe it’s self selection in the postings!
Really, really enjoyed Revenant - it’s a pretty dark story (no spoilers, but it’s a Dax story and Joran is involved, so…) but at its core remains hopeful.
And in fairness to Coda, it made me re-watch the Devidian episodes of TNG, which then led me to a Data focused re-watch of some great episodes!
Really, really enjoyed Revenant - it’s a pretty dark story (no spoilers, but it’s a Dax story and Joran is involved, so…) but at its core remains hopeful.
And in fairness to Coda, it made me re-watch the Devidian episodes of TNG, which then led me to a Data focused re-watch of some great episodes!
Oh, it was pretty good for its time and context. The same cheesy production values as Doctor Who at the time, but a somewhat darker and more mature storyline about a band of escaped criminals becoming rebels against a tyrannical Federation, sort of a futuristic Robin Hood thing, or a forerunner of Firefly in a loose sense. It had some silly ideas and mediocre episodes and random cast changes along the way, but I remember it fondly and would welcome the chance to see it again if I could find it anywhere.
I've never heard any indication that Roddenberry was familiar wtih British sci-fi, and I don't see why he would've had any objections to B7 (unless he was upset seeing "Federation" used for the bad guys, but it's a pretty generic label, so that seems unlikely). It's well-known that his objection to ships with odd numbers of nacelles was a reaction against the popularity of Franz Joseph's fan designs in the Star Fleet Technical Manual. Roddenberry was jealous when anyone else got recognition for creating things in his universe, so he liked to play power games and hand down arbitrary dicta saying "No, that's not allowed." Blake's 7 was a separate franchise altogether, so he would've had no reason to feel threatened by it.
Hmm. I remember the long-since-deprecated-with-extreme-prejudice TMP tie-in "Spaceflight Chronology" proposing an experimental starship "Tritium," with a 3-nacelle configuration, and describing it as a colossal failure that put an end to further 3-nacelle experiments. It might have even been mentioned in The Final Reflection. I seem to recall other SfC references therein.
That's an odd way of putting it. It's all fiction, so going in a different direction isn't "deprecation," just making different conjectures and creative choices. I mean, Rick Sternbach did the art for the SFC, but he also worked as an artist and technical consultant on TNG and its successors, and he didn't seem to mind participating in the creation of a totally different version of Starfleet technology and history. I don't think he was "deprecating" his own earlier work, just creating something distinct from it.
I don't know about Roddenberry's aversion to 3-nacelle ships, however, here's a quote from the book 'Blake's 7 - The Inside Story' from Blake's 7 Production Designer on the look of the Liberator.
Roger’s (Murray-Leach) original design was a marvel of turrets and spires – unlike any spaceship ever seen in film or television before. As with many other inspired ideas, it was the result of invention working hand in hand with a fast-approaching deadline. “Like all things in television, we were working terribly quickly, but we didn’t want to in any way copy or have anything that looked at all like the spaceships from ‘Star Trek’. I turned the ship around, so it was drawn to look as though it was going one way, but flew the other way. In fact, if you take the line of flow, the angles go with it to give it a sense of speed, and we turned that around so the ‘wings’ all canted forwards not backwards.”
The 3 nacelles thing wasn't about who created it, it was about who the money made went to. The old Franz Joseph Schnaubelt manual was the first of it's kind, and allowed FJ to lisence it seperate to Star Trek or Gene Roddenberry's approval - leading to the old Star Fleet Battles game. Here's an old interview with his daughter, Karen Dick, which goes into some detail about the behind-the-scenes stuff.
I may have to reread this trilogy at some point to get my full opinion on it. But it sort of lost me with Book 1 with just death scene after death scene. Book 2 picked me up a small bit but then deaths again started to dominate in the latter half and Book 3 just seemed to go into a lot of detail about the deaths (such as Bashir's) that I skimmed read most of that book.
Maybe the last two years influenced my reading of it and if I revisit in five years I will have a different reaction to series.
Maybe the last two years influenced my reading of it and if I revisit in five years I will have a different reaction to series.
The difference between Coda and the last battle is the universe of Narnia’s destruction is meaningful for everyone involved. History comes to a triumphant end and the good guys go to the “real” Narnia.
The equivalent would be in Coda Q intervening at the last minute and evacuating everyone in the litverse to a personal paradise(or I suppose judging humanity worthy and uplifting them to Q-dom or something).
But that’s not what happens in Coda, everyone dies without any reward or consequence.
I read destiny twice. I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to do so again now.
Saying customers are in the grieving process because they legitimately don’t like a writing/product decision is an extremely degrading and patronizing thing to say. It reeks of both shilling and tone deafness.
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They didn't really have the "Narnia" option here, since the idea was to set up the new canon as the "real" timeline, and since future canonical productions will not acknowledge the books, they couldn't have the Litverse versions of the characters move there or retain their memories. They had to do what they could within the limitations that exist on tie-in fiction. So the characters can only live on in the sense that their alternate-history selves, from whom they diverged about 14 years earlier, are still alive (most of them, anyway). They're still essentially the same people, just with different memories. So it's more like Crisis on Infinite Earths than The Last Battle.
(And by that analogy, I keep wanting to believe that Quark is the one person who remembers the novel timeline, because Armin Shimerman played Psycho-Pirate in Batman: The Brave and the Bold.)
That the Devidians are prevented from eating all of existence (presumably eventually eating each other until the last one eats itself) is not a "reward or consequence"?
I’m not sure how this would be a problem? Q or maybe some even higher ranking being takes/uplifts everyone to some higher dimension. The good guys get a happy ending. There is no need to acknowledge this or reference it in future books aligned with Picard and Discovery. Maybe an eschatological “they all went to heaven” sort of ending is not very Trekkian either, but it would be a far more deserving send off than “everyone dies”. The readers at least get a sense of satisfaction that these characters got a triumphant ending, not a nihilistic one.
Problem with this is no one is invested in the Devidians, at least not for themselves. They exist quite clearly as a plot mechanism to end the novelverse, everyone knows they aren’t going to eat the Picard timeline. There’s no stakes there. No impact. The novelverse characters’ sacrifice is only impactful if one cares about the Picard timeline.*
Which, is a bold assumption to make of the fans. (I personally am not into Picard, others might be).
Even more than that, you could just end the novelverse on a dangling note and the Picard timeline would continue the same. The effect would be the same(nothing for the novelverse, nothing for the new shows) but we wouldn’t have this atrocious slap in the face.
*or rather it’s only impactful if one cares about the novelverse and the Picard timeline as part of a unified trek multiverse. Which again is assuming a lot from the readers.
I think where we differ is how we define "atrocious slap in the face." Whether we define "the Novelverse never happened" as an "atrocious slap in the face," or we define "the Novelverse sacrificed itself to prevent The End Of Everything" as an "atrocious slap in the face."
I have never had the level of interest in SW literature that I have for ST literature. And yet, I'm deeply pissed about its having been unceremoniously dumped, going from quasi-canonical status to being demoted to "legends." Pissed enough that I don't have the interest in SW movies that I once did. That is how I define "atrocious slap in the face."
That might be a fan's wishful thinking, but it would be terrible writing to end a story with such a gratuitous deus ex machina. And it would be out of character for the Q. Why would they care? They're billions of years old as individuals. We're mayflies to them. Their interest in human affairs is the equivalent of being interested in your pet goldfish, or the ants in an ant farm. When they die, you just get new ones.
Happy endings need to be earned. You don't just tack one on arbitrarily because you're afraid the audience might have to feel something that isn't warm and cozy. You might as well ask that "The City on the Edge of Forever" ended with the Guardian of Forever spiriting Edith Keeler forward in time to live happily ever after with Captain Kirk. That's not the story that was being told there. And it's not the story Dayton, James, and Dave chose to tell here.
How in the world is it nihilistic that they sacrificed themselves to save every other timeline in the multiverse? The whole point is that their sacrifice does serve a very real purpose. It made a difference.
The "Picard timeline" is the canon timeline, period. It's all the same timeline, old shows and new -- just like TNG was the same timeline as TOS and ENT was the same timeline as TNG, despite all the purist fans who refused to believe it at the time. Yes, there are always some old-school fans who don't accept the new stuff, but it should be self-evident that the older fanbase will dwindle over time, while the new shows bring in new audiences. There was a time when many TOS fans were skeptical of TNG, but today there are probably far more TNG fans alive than TOS-only fans. That is the whole point of creating new series in a franchise -- to attract new fans, because the old fans are bound to move on eventually, in one way or another.
The purpose of tie-in novels has always been and will always be to support the screen franchise -- not just the past franchise, but the present and future one. We don't treat old and new Trek as separate things. It's all the same franchise, all the same whole. And the target audience for new tie-ins is the same as the target audience for new shows -- everyone, old and new viewers alike.
They could have. They've explained why they chose not to. Relitigating it at this point is repetitive and pointless.
Damn straight!
"I know you love them, but it's over, mate.
Doesn't matter, put the books away..."
I don't understand how knowing the way the Novelverse ends means you enjoy previous books any less.
Like, newsflash, we're all going to die one day too, but that doesn't make our day-to-day any less meaningful.
Like, newsflash, we're all going to die one day too, but that doesn't make our day-to-day any less meaningful.
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Speak for yourself sir; I plan to live forever.
